Frequently Asked Questions

This question is hard to answer since the difficulty of the website configuration is directly related to your comfort with using technology. For example, if you consider yourself computer illiterate, you may have some difficulty with the initial configuration of your website. However, if you are versed with other content management systems like WordPress, you’ll probably find it easier to use than anything else you’ve ever encountered. That being said, if you’re worried about setting up your own website, we can do that all of that work for you within 3 business days for only $150. More information about our Basic Configuration Service can be found here.

No. We don’t offer any kind of preview service or demo site. However, if you sign up and you’re not completely satisfied with your Good Gallery purchase within the first 30 days, we offer a 100% money back guarantee on both your Startup Fee your Hosting Fee!

Probably. If you’re thinking about your SEO needs, Good Gallery offers more capabilities in this area than any of our competitors. However, these capabilities need rich content in order to be effective. In other words, although we provide the best tools available, you’ll need to develop and create all the keywords, keyword phrases, and textual content that will be associated with the images you feature on your website. You’ll also want to perform other tasks off your website that help establish your relevance with search engines. To help you along in these tasks we have a comprehensive SEO information section in our User Manual that not only describes how to enter the appropriate information within the Good Gallery interface but also offers general best practices that should be considered when creating that content for your website. That being said, if you put in the work, then you’ll definitely see amazing results in your search engine rankings.

Our capabilities include both content-based SEO and technical SEO and all of them were designed from the ground up to meet the unique needs of visual artists. For content-based SEO, Good Gallery starts with the idea that every image in a gallery is as a separate page and that the content on those image pages may be highly optimized on an individual basis.

First of all, every image can be assigned a unique title. That image title is arguably the most important element that may affect rankings. Once an image title is entered, either by using built-in Good Gallery tools or by importing it automatically via Exif data, that information is used in the HTML title tag, in the heading in the caption area, in the URL for the image, and in breadcrumbs associated with the image. It’s also the same content that appears in visitor bookmarks.

Additionally, highly optimized caption information can be entered for every image. That textual information may be entered manually using built-in Good Gallery tools or it can be created automatically when images are uploaded based on Exif data embedded in your images. Caption information is intended to serve as long-form keyword-optimized text identifying an image. Common examples for caption content include information about the subject, theme, location, and emotional aspects related to the image.

Every image can also be geocoded in order to provide information related to local search optimization. Image geocoding supports both longitude/latitude information as well as complete or partial address information. All geocoded images are also automatically linked to Google Maps which SEO experts believe provides search engines with additional authentication when speaking to the relevance of an image when geographic search elements are involved.

One of our customers, Susan Stripling, has done an exceptional job of developing keyword-rich content for individual images using all of these tools. To view her efforts in a real-life environment, simply visit Susan’s site, click on a gallery image, and then use the Information Button located on the Control Bar to activate the image caption (or you can alternatively press the letter “c” on your keyboard).

This information is only a representative sampling of just one of many areas where Good Gallery excels in SEO. More information about optimizing Good Gallery websites for SEO is available in the Good Gallery User Manual available to all customers.

In order to get started, you’ll just sign up for our services using the secure form found at https://signup.goodgallery.com. At a minimum you’ll need to select either a monthly or annual Hosting Plan and also pay your one-time Startup Fee. After your form is submitted, you’ll receive an email in just a few minutes letting you know where you can login to your new website. In other words, you can get started building your new website immediately. Alternatively, you may want to consider one or both of our optional services—the Basic Configuration Service (where we build your site for you within 3 business days) and our Blog Migration Service (where we move your blog for you). If you choose our Basic Configuration Service, you can visit http://www.goodgallery.com/basic-configuration-service/ to learn more about the information we need from to get started building your site as well as see everything that’s included with our service.

Probably. Good Gallery provides our customers with access to over 135 different fonts. Each of those fonts can be applied separately to website menus, headings, and body text. Full support is offered for Google fonts, system fonts, open license fonts, and fonts purchased from and hosted by repositories like Fonts.com or Adobe Typekit. The U.S. Copyright Office has determined that fonts are protected and in keeping with those concerns, Good Gallery only provides support for free fonts that can be commercially licensed at the server level or for subscription fonts hosted at font repositories. If the font you need is not already available in Good Gallery, you can request that we add it and we’ll make it available within 7 business days assuming that the appropriate web licensing is available. Here’s a list of just some of the fonts currently available:

No. Good Gallery is hosted on internationally-distributed, professionally-managed servers allowing our software to operate effectively and with superior reliability and performance. These complex and interconnected servers are uniquely configured and optimized to work together in a way that simply isn’t possible on the servers offered by traditional hosting providers. With Good Gallery as your hosting provider, you’re freed from the technical aspects of managing the security, availability, and performance of your website. As an additional benefit, our customers share the same program code which means that automatic updates help assure that your website is always running on the latest, most-optimized, and secure version of our software. That means that your website will be less expensive to operate, better maintained, and more secure than if you were to host your website on other platforms.

Yes. If you’d like to have a WordPress blog under your Good Gallery website, then WordPress software and hosting on our servers is available to you at no extra cost. Those services are included as part of your standard hosting fee. With just a few easy clicks of your mouse, you can install WordPress on our servers at any time. If this is your first blog, after you initiate the installation, you can start creating new posts right away. And this new WordPress installation will provide you with all of the tools you’d expect in a WordPress installation including the ability to install themes and plugins as well as create your own personalized pages and posts. If you already have an existing blog somewhere else, then you can use built-in WordPress tools and various plugins to transfer your old blog posts, images, plugins, and themes over to your new WordPress installation on our servers. We provide basic instructions on how to do that in our User Manual. Or, if that process sounds too complicated, we can take care of everything for you with our Blog Migration Service.

For your blog URL, if your current blog is located in the default WordPress subdirectory under your current website (e.g. www.example.com/blog/), then your new blog on Good Gallery servers will also be located at that same URL. If that’s the case, then that means that when you switch to Good Gallery, your blog post addresses won’t change and any SEO work that you’ve done for your blog will remain intact. Alternatively, if your blog was installed in the root directory of your old website (as is sometimes the case for websites that were built entirely on WordPress), then you can still move your posts and content over to Good Gallery. In those situations, the URL to your posts and pages will change. When that happens, you’ll want to create 301 Redirects to help maintain your SEO and ensure that any bookmarked pages are easily found by visitors. Detailed instructions about how to create 301 Redirects is found in our user manual. Finally, if your blog is hosted on a different domain from your website (e.g. www.myblogdomain.com), then you can continue hosting your blog at that other location and link to it via the menu system of your Good Gallery website. Alternatively, you can move your blog to Good Gallery so that it would reside under your regular website domain (www.example.com/blog/).

We have elected to avoid direct critiques or offer comparisons to our competitors. Instead, we would invite you to view our Features page and our Samples page and hopefully that information will help you identify those differences for yourself.

Probably not. Although there are no guarantees when it comes to search engine rankings, as long as you follow SEO best-practices when you make the switch, you should be able to maintain your current search engine positions. We have had countless Good Gallery customers who have held first-page positions prior to switching over and they have all maintained or elevated their positions after moving to Good Gallery. That being said, when you make that transition, we recommend that you follow certain steps to help ensure that you maintain your rankings. To provide you with assistance along the way, we’ve developed comprehensive SEO documentation that is freely available in our user manual. If you follow that guidance, then that will put you on the right path when you make your switch. As for your blog, as long as you maintain the same URL on both your old site and your new site (e.g. www.example.com/blog), then you’d presumably see no change to your blog post positions unless you make other changes.

Yes. Although we provide a few recommendations on how to move your blog yourself, if you don’t feel comfortable moving your old WordPress blog to your new WordPress blog (included at no additional charge with your Good Gallery hosting), we offer a service where we can move your blog for you. When you choose this option, we move your posts, pages, plugins, and even your theme over to the Good Gallery servers. More information about this service and related pricing can be found on the Blog Migration Service page.

Probably. In our experience, most of our customers can host more than 450 full size photos on their Good Gallery website without reaching their hosting limit. In fact, fewer than 1% of our clients purchase additional storage beyond the 10GB included with every Good Gallery account. If you need more space, you can purchase additional storage at any time for $5 per 5GB per month.

No. However, we do include a free WordPress installation as part of your standard Good Gallery hosting. That being said, you’ll still be responsible for managing your own themes. If you’re looking for a new theme that will be complementary to your Good Gallery website, many of our clients love the clean look of InfinityGrid. Although we understand that particular theme is no longer supported by its creator, it still works great and it’s currently available from Themeforest for only $43.

No. Although we host your Good Gallery website and WordPress blog, we don’t offer email hosting. Most of our clients simply continue hosting their email at the same location where they are currently hosting their email. Alternatively, if you’re trying to setup email hosting at a new location, we recommend Google Apps for Work (which also includes Gmail). With Google Apps for Work you associate your domain name with Gmail and receive and send your business email directly from your own address for less than $5 per month. And, if you need lots of phone and email support, the folks at Google really do a great job of walking you through everything you need to know. More information can be found at Google Apps for Work.

The SEO practices employed by Good Gallery are all “white hat” SEO. The term white hat refers to companies that take a highly ethical approach to search engine optimization. In other words, we don’t every try to fool Google. And since we take that approach, it’s extremely unlikely that any of our customers will ever be penalized for any aspect of our software—even though Google makes changes to their algorithm almost every day. As for the future of SEO, our team pours over several dozen SEO articles weekly looking for clues as to what the future holds in search. And for this reason, we employ or invent the most cutting edge SEO strategies and tools long before many companies even realize that something new is happening with search engines. In fact, we’re adding some new SEO feature or capability to our software almost every week. Although our customers still need to create content and follow best practices in order to succeed at at search, we actively seek out new features and capabilities that will help our customers reach their goals.

Yes. Although we provide dozens of tools and thousands of settings that will allow you to configure your site on your own, if setting up your website sounds intimidating, Good Gallery offers a Basic Configuration Service for time-strapped photographers and for folks who would rather spend time working on their art rather than spend time figuring out how to setup their website. To put it simply, after you’ve signed up for your Good Gallery website and after you provide us with a few basic materials, we promise to have your basic website ready to launch within 3 business days! We encourage you to visit this page to learn more about our Basic Configuration Service.

In an effort to clearly define the differences between Good Gallery websites and WordPress blogs, we sometimes need to provide clarification. Good Gallery an independent content management system designed to showcase artist portfolios. WordPress is a separate content management system designed for hosting frequently updated, anecdotal content. Although Good Gallery isn’t available as a WordPress theme, if you’d like to have your own WordPress blog in addition to your Good Gallery website, rest assured that WordPress hosting is included with our standard hosting services. In fact, with a single click of a button, you can install a WordPress blog under your Good Gallery website (e.g. www.example.com/blog). On that WordPress site, you can install plugins and themes and change the appearance of your blog to meet your unique needs and requirements.

With Good Gallery, we don’t limit you with a set number of templates or themes. Instead, we offer you thousands of different settings that allow you to control all website behaviors—both large and small. For example, by changing a single drop down option, you can move your logo around the screen, change the menu position, or indicate that you want a single photo displayed on your home page instead of grid of photos. When you sign up for Good Gallery, you’ll start with a default layout with your logo in the top left corner and featuring left-hand navigation with single images displayed on your home page and on gallery pages. Starting there, you can customize your site to an almost infinite degree. You can even configure your website to look like one of our Samples or you can go in a completely different direction in order to meet your own unique brand.

The domain associated with your website is typically purchased and managed through a domain hosting service provided by companies like GoDaddy, HostGator, 1to1, or Network Solutions. Those companies offer you the ability to login and manage your own domain settings; those domain settings are used to indicate where your website is hosted and also where your email should be delivered. When you sign up for a Good Gallery website, you’ll be assigned a temporary address that you’ll use to access your development site (e.g. YOURNAME.goodgallery.com). Once your new website is completed and you’re ready to go live, you can refer to the highly detailed instructions in our User Manual that provide information about how to go about changing your domain settings so that your website will stop pointing at your old location and start pointing to your new website. And in answer to the other question probably on your mind, in most cases your email settings shouldn’t change either and you’ll continue to manage your email in the same way you’ve done in the past and through the same provider.

Good Gallery isn’t a proofing site. If you have thousands of photos that you need to sell or share with clients, then your best bet would be to use Good Gallery for your portfolio website and a photo hosting service for your bulk storage and online sales. We strongly recommend that you consider ShootProof. Their offering is one of the most advanced and versatile available anywhere. In fact, if you’re a new ShootProof customer, you can save 25% off your first year by entering GOODGALLERY as your promo code. For more information, visit the ShootProof website.

Yes. If you’d like to have multiple websites, under separate domains or subdomains, then we can certainly accommodate you. However, each separate domain or subdomain would be considered an individual website and thus each would be subject to a separate monthly or annual Hosting Plan. However, the Startup Fee is waived for any additional websites.

No. When you sign up for a Good Gallery website, you’ll choose a custom name that you’ll use as your temporary “getting started” address while you build your new website (e.g. example.goodgallery.com). This temporary address allows you to keep your old website live while you get your new site ready for the world. Once you’re ready to “go live” with your new Good Gallery website, you’ll use the instructions we provide to point your domain (e.g. example.com) to your new site. This temporary address allows you to keep your old website running while you get started on your new Good Gallery website.

Your temporary address is automatically hidden from search engines. And, unless you share your temporary address with someone else, that address is unavailable to the general public. After you “go live” with your new site, you can access your website using your own domain (e.g. example.com) or you can continue to access your site using your temporary address (e.g. example.goodgallery.com).

It’s important to remember that although your temporary address will always remain active, you’re the only one with knowledge of that temporary address unless you’ve elected to share that information with someone else or you’ve linked to your temporary address from a public-facing website (or your own website).

Yes. Good Gallery offers several options for hosting video on your website. First, we offer a special Video Page that presents your movies in “full screen” format in a manner similar to the way gallery photos are displayed. To create a Video Page, you’ll simply provide the URL to your Vimeo or YouTube video—and your Good Gallery website does the rest. If you’d like to see examples of Video Pages, please take a look at the “Movies” section of Jerry Ghionis’ weddings website (http://www.jerryghionisphotography.com) or the “Wedding Cinema” section of Rose Street Studio (http://www.rosestreetstudio.com/). Alternatively, you can embed videos directly into any text page on your website. To embed a video on a text page, you’ll click on the Embed Video button and then enter the URL to your Vimeo or YouTube video. That’s all you have to do to show video on text pages!

Yes. If you’d like to display social media badges or icons on your website, you have several convenient options available. The first option is to activate and populate a Header or Footer area on your website and populate those areas with social media icons. The second option is to include those social media options directly in your menu system. For example, you could add a new Menu Page called “Social Media” and then add Direct Link / URL Pages that link to your social media sites (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest). You may also choose to include social media badges on your contact page. And of course the Share option on our Control Bar allows visitors to easily share your content with others via Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Google+, and even via email!

Yes. We offer an extremely powerful form tool that allows you create and manage an unlimited number of forms and form fields. And you can add those forms to any text page on your Good Gallery website. As an additional alternative, you can also use embedded form systems from companies like Wufoo™ Form Builder on your Good Gallery website or your blog. If you use a management system like ShootQ or Tave, you can link to their proprietary forms. As an final alternative, you may also use a WordPress form plugin and direct your Good Gallery contact page to that plugin page on your blog.

Yes. Good Gallery includes a special SEO-optimized textual content area for galleries. For our system, Gallery Info refers to the text that appears on the first page of your gallery sections and at the bottom of your thumbnail areas. Since you’ll often feature a gallery image or a thumbnail area on your home page, Gallery Info text will also be available on your home page. Gallery Info is very important from a SEO perspective and should be added to every Gallery Page or Thumbnail Grid on your Good Gallery website. Information entered in this Gallery Info filed is commonly helpful to your SEO optimization efforts since the content and keywords found there are the same text that search engines will see when indexing your home page or image galleries. The text can be of any length be we recommend 400-500 words although the ideal would be more than 1,000 words of useful, unique, and keyword-rich descriptive content. This tool also supports HTML markup if you’d like to include headings, links, or other special formatting in these text areas.

Yes. Good Gallery supports the ability to link to any external website, either through the menu / navigation of your website or from links on individual pages. Examples of links to other websites include photo proofing sites like Zenfolio or SmugMug or even partner sites like album manufacturers or external blogs.

Yes. If you’d like to integrate a payment system like those offered by PayPal onto your site, our text page editors include the ability to embed HTML like the code provided by payment services to enable transactions on your site.

Yes. Good Gallery websites are the fastest portfolio sites in the world. And that’s not an idle exaggeration that we invented to market our company. As a point in fact, our load times are twice as fast as most of our closest competitors and 4-5 times faster than the speeds possible on WordPress blogs—particularly those that are “designed for photographers.” Given the fact that visitors have come to the point that they have little patience when it comes to waiting for information to load in their browser or on their phone, this translates to better visitor retention and greater satisfaction with their overall experience on your site. And here’s a fun fact. Did you know that after the first 2 seconds, you lose 7% of your visitors for every second that it takes for one of your pages to load. If you do some quick math, you can see that for this reason alone you can easily justify the cost of switching to Good Gallery.

Yes. Good Gallery websites present larger images in higher fidelity than what you can realize on other website platforms. In fact, our entire design philosophy revolves around the concept of letting your amazing images do the work of selling to your visitors and that the design of the site is secondary and should in fact be virtually invisible. In other words, it is so intuitive that it falls away and the visitor is left only with the impression left by your images. And, due to our performance optimizations related to image presentation, we can also show images as large as full screen—without a loss in fidelity and without the speed penalty normally seen when presenting large photos on websites.

Yes. If you’d like to present information on your site in more than one language, you have several options available. They may include a) creating two content pages for every text page on your website—one in each language; b) create two websites—one in each language and then having the user choose the language of their choice from a portal / entry screen; or c) use JavaScript you create and allow users to select their language of choice on a text page and then only present text in the language of choice throughout the website.

No. Regular galleries and text pages on a Good Gallery website don’t offer the ability to stream music to visitors. Although we have the technical know-how needed to implement music playing services on our websites, we don’t offer that capability because we feel that presenting music to visitors will negatively impact their overall experience on your site. Here are our reasons why we hold to that idea.

Offering music in the background will interrupt audio streams already being played on visitor computers. In other words, many visitors will already be playing other music or watching videos when they visit a website. And if music starts playing on a website, then the website’s audio stream will clash with the visitor’s music and create a disharmonious mess. In some cases, website music will interrupt the visitor’s preferred audio source. And that kind of behavior won’t engender good will among visitors.

Although some website owners may feel that their music choices are pleasant or heart-warming, some visitors will not share those same musical tastes. And since the impression left on some visitors may thus be negative, it’s a much safer design practice to offer silence in lieu of music.

Many visitors will be visit a website using a work computer. And those work computers may be set with volume levels that are easily heard by co-workers. If a working professional visits a website and music is playing, the visitor will scramble to find the website or computer mute button. In the worst case, the visitor may close their browser or click the back button to prevent the music from continuing. None of those actions will offer a positive experience or outcome for on online business.

Some visitors may open multiple sites in multiple browser tabs simultaneously. When that happens, and unwanted music starts playing from one of those tabs, the visitor may be unable to locate the offending website and will simply close tabs until the offending music stops playing. And when the visitor does that, they may never return to the website.

Even compressed audio files require bandwidth. And that means that websites with music are going to load slower than websites without music.

Offering background music on a website was once considered to be ground-breaking and unique. However, as technology has now moved far forward, some visitors may view music on a website as indicative of dated design principles. And, as a corollary, they may feel that the website in question isn’t following the latest trends.

Some older browsers and computers have problems supporting multimedia. And on those systems, the computer browser may crash or behave in an unexpected manner when music plays on a website.

Converting visitors to customers is the goal of most websites. Website owners must ask themselves if music is going to positively influence purchase decisions for EVERY customer. If that answer is no, then offering music on a website may work against site owners focused on improving customer conversion percentages.

Unless a company provides multimedia content (like MTV or Disney), then music is unlikely to be found on business websites. Since artists like us offer professional services and thus are businesses, omitting music from our sites helps establish a business focus which may engender visitor trust.

Some website owners feel that adding music to a website helps makes it more interesting. And that may be true for those visitors who appreciate the website owner’s musical selection and who don’t experience any of the issues outlined in this top 10 list. However, we’d argue that the best way to convert visitors to customers is to provide them with only the information they seek—nothing more, nothing less. And since music is something not always expected or appreciated on an artist website, including music has the increased potential to reduce the number of visitor conversions.

Note: If you’d like to embed a video on your Good Gallery website, and if the video includes a soundtrack, then the audio will play through your website.

No. Good Gallery sites use adaptive technology, a superior solution for performance-oriented websites. In both responsive and adaptive design, mobile users are presented with the same content across all devices. However, the technical approach for determining the type of device is managed differently under a responsive architecture versus an adaptive architecture.

With responsive design, visitors download bits of code that detect the kind of device being used along with all of the HTML, text, and images relevant to that page. The browser then uses that data to determine how to display that information on that particular device. With adaptive technologies, instead of downloading and processing code on the visitor’s computer or device, the server determines the device being used prior to downloading any information and then provides only the information needed by that particular device. By detecting the type of device prior to the download, Good Gallery realizes much better website performance than what is achievable by responsive sites—simply because responsive design requires the downloading and processing of code that may not be relevant to a particular device.

Another reason why adaptive sites are arguably superior to responsive sites relates to the overall visitor experience. With a responsive design, programmers and designers are often forced make compromises in website design so that their websites can work equally well across all devices. Although making those kinds of compromises within a responsive architecture can admittedly still yield a website that looks good on all devices, responsive developers simply cannot achieve the same level of precise control afforded by a company working with an adaptive architecture. And with a Good Gallery site, we demand that kind of precise control in order to ensure the best possible visitor experience.

In terms of SEO, there is no difference between adaptive and responsive design—assuming that the responsive or adaptive architecture is implemented correctly. Search engines strive to ensure that their search results endorse only those websites that share the same information across all devices. And they also want to make sure that that visitors will have a good overall experience while using that device. With that in mind, search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo all recognize both adaptive and responsive architectures and do not give ranking priority to one architectural approach over the other.

For many companies, a responsive website is certainly good enough to meet the needs of their customers. However, for our team, good enough is never good enough. Therefore, although an adaptive architecture is more complicated to architect and takes longer for us to develop than similar responsive designs, our team believes that the performance benefits and functional superiority of an adaptive website architecture outweigh those associated additional development costs. But the most important consideration is that we feel that adaptive design is what is best for our customers and the people who visit their websites.

No. Good Gallery automatically resizes every image you upload. This resize is performed to ensure that your images look great and load quickly on any browser on any device. In fact, our servers store 50 resized images for every single photo that you upload. With that in mind, to save you time as you prepare your images, uploading full size images is recommended.

No. Good Gallery customers are assigned a shared server IP address. It was once believed that websites with a dedicated IP address would receive a benefit in search engine results. This myth was born in 2003 when Craig Silverstein, then Director of Technology at Google, stated that using a dedicated IP address would provide a significant benefit to SEO efforts. However, years of testing by dozens of SEO luminaries have not shown this to be true. Additionally, Gary Illyes of Google has stated that the use of shared servers versus a dedicated IP does not affect SEO rankings.

Although we include WordPress hosting with your Good Gallery installation, we don’t offer support services for your blog beyond those associated with your hosting. In other words, if one of our servers is having problems, we’ll certainly address those issues but if you need help making changes to your WordPress blog, then you can refer to WordPress tutorials readily available from a wide variety of online sources. Or, if you need more hands-on help, you might want to consider a reasonably priced freelance WordPress consultant (and photographer) who has worked with lots of Good Gallery clients and who has great working relationship with our engineering team. Here’s his contact information:

Although we provide information in our User Manual that is typically enough for most people who are switching to Good Gallery, if you need extra help with your email accounts or domain names, you can either call your domain or email host for support or you might want to consider the help of an independent consultant. You can find a consultant on your own, or you can use one that we recommend. Among other things, these independent consultants can help you with changing your domain DNS so that your website points to Good Gallery web servers, moving away from an email provider and migrating old email to Google Apps for Work.

Once your website is live on Good Gallery, you won’t need to continue paying your current website host for hosting services. However, you’ll continue to pay any domain name renewal fees to your domain registrar and any fees due to your email hosting provider (if applicable).

Good Gallery's powerful and customizable portfolio websites help photographers differentiate themselves and do more business.